


Through the Lookingglass

by Polly_Lynn



Category: Castle
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Family, Friendship, Gen, Heavy Angst, Romance, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-14 22:20:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4582248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She lets him in, but there's never any hope. He's so afraid of failing that it's prophecy, and one yes on sufferance is nothing but a delay of the inevitable."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Well. This is an awful thing. An AU of Knockout (3 x 24) and the first bit of Rise (4 x 01). Three chapters, one long, two short.

 

 

The first time, she dies.

He doesn't know that. Either part. It's simply his greatest fear that first time. Everyone's greatest fear, and he doesn't know how the burden comes to rest on his shoulders alone. How Montgomery and her _father_ and every single person who knows her has come to the conclusion that it's his job and his alone to see that it doesn't come to pass.

He doesn't know at all how it's come to this as he stands in front of her door, working up his nerve. Coaxing himself into movement.

_Can I come in?_

He knows as soon as he asks that he shouldn't have. That this is going wrong already and he should have walked right through the door without invitation. Shocked her into silence by crossing every last stupid, agonizing boundary they've kept so carefully in place this whole last year.

She says yes. She lets him in, but there's never any hope. He's so afraid of failing that it's prophecy, and one _yes_ on sufferance is nothing but a delay of the inevitable. Every move he makes is wrong. Every word is one more trap he's stumbled into.

She's gone. Already gone and he knows they were wrong. Every single one of them was wrong in thinking he could change a thing. It's all he can think as he pleads with her—that he'd failed before his fist hit the door and not a thing unfolding before him says otherwise. She's gone.

She's vicious. Black behind her eyes and her tongue dripping venom. She wants nothing. Of him, for him, from him. Nothing, and it's like she's sad to see him standing in this empty place. Like she would be if she had room left in her for anything but the thing that drives her.

She warned him that this is how it would be. Smaller. Darker. Paler and _less_ than she is now—even like this. That version of her warned him from the start, and it's far too late to change anything now.

Every move she makes is part of a carefully executed plan to drive him out the door, and he's idiot enough to rise to the bait. Oh, he tries to reason with her first. He lays out all the evidence for why she can't win this. Tries to tell her that _her_ death won't lend any kind of meaning to her mother's. That all it can do is leave a void in so many lives.

But it's no good at all. She knows him for the coward he is.

_And what about you, Rick?_

She knows him. That's what kills her the first time.

Not right away. He goes. A night passes in fury. In agony. Another day, and he's prepared to beg, if only she'd let him. He's prepared to follow her. Do anything— _anything_ —even if it kills them both. But it's all silence until Montgomery calls.

It's worse, then. Somehow worse to hear the man's voice down the line. Grim and saying almost nothing, though some part of him knows, even that first time. Some part of him goes dark, but he pushes it aside.

"Roy. Tell me," he pleads for no reason at all. He's out of his mind with fear. Out of his mind, and he'll do anything.

" _Be there. Castle."_ His voice breaks, but it's a thing of the moment. An opening gone before either one of them can do anything about it at all. " _Just be there if you want her to live."_

"But what do I . . ."

_"You'll know."_

But he doesn't know. He doesn't know nearly enough to save her in the end.

He carries her, sobbing and kicking, from the hangar. Another delay of the inevitable, if it's even that. He tells the story when she can't. When she's a staring, brittle shell, and whatever Roy Montgomery did—whatever his sins—he knows she'd never let him die a villain in the company of these men.

He sits in silence at her side when her voice comes at last. When the tears streak unashamed down Ryan's face and he can feel the fury coming off Esposito in waves. He sits in silence and knows he hasn't stopped her from throwing her life away. He hasn't convinced her to stand down. He knows that tomorrow or the next day or the next she'll fall clear through and into this. The loss of her mother and her mentor. So much already carved out of her, and now this.

He knows hasn't changed a thing.

And then she dies. The next day she dies.

His body collides with hers. Too late. He knows it's too late before the ground rises up to meet them. Before he rolls her body toward his and sees tendrils of red. Awful fingers curling and clawing. Streaming out in every direction from the hole in her chest.

He screams that it's too late. His voice is a high, howling thing as he clings to her body, hitting out as Esposito tries to pull him away.

"It's too late," he whispers end to end, and it feels like hours.

It feels like forever without her until it's no time at all. Negative time clawing at every cell in him. Pulling him back and back and back and he's standing in front of her door, working up his nerve. Coaxing himself into movement.

_Can I come in?_

 

* * *

 

_Can I come in?_

He says it a second time when he's hardly finished the first, disarming her. Startling himself violently enough that she steps back, wordless as he moves inside.

It's a mystery. His own movement. How he can possibly move. How she can possibly be standing there with her gun drawn and that terrible, familiar black behind her eyes when she's _dead_.

_Castle, if you've got something to say just please say it._

The words are a nightmare. Dialogue leaping ahead, stripping away what precious little time he has left with her, and he _knows_ this time. It's more than just fear. He knows.

_Nightmare_.

That's what this is. What it must be. She's dead. He didn't save her, and this is his life now. Sadistic repetition of his failure.

_Beckett, everyone associated with this case is dead . . ._

The words come like a compulsion. Like he's an actor in a movie, his dialogue long since set down. He bites his tongue. Literally. Viciously. Blood in his mouth and he sways. Nauseated, but it unfolds. It _keeps_ unfolding, not quite exactly like before.

_Is that what we are?_

He doesn't remember that. He doesn't remember her asking quite that way, and it feels like he's going crazy. It feels like more than a nightmare. Cruel in the accumulation of small changes. A shift in her posture. A different choice of words on her part. On his when he can bring any kind of focus to bear, and it's cruel. The _hope_ it gives him is cruel enough that he lashes out.

_I've got no clue what we are . . ._

He rages. She rages back, and then it's gone. Possibility. Hope. The spark of her left goes and it's all the same. It falls into the same terrible lines it did before. She wants him gone and he goes.

Roy doesn't call that time. No one calls until Esposito in the middle of the night with sobs choking him so badly he can't get the words out. Castle takes pity on him. On them both. He offers it up.

"She's dead, isn't she?"

He knows the answer already. He can hardly hear himself over the litany already begun. _Too late. Too late._ End to end. He can hardly hear Esposito.

_"They both are. Beckett and Montgomery. In the hangar."_

 

* * *

 

_Can I come in?_

He's careful the third time. Tentative, though it felt like that was wrong in the first place. But he can't bear the idea of her dying without him again. It's a shock. Blank white and wide mouthed that there can be bad and worse in the seemingly inevitable fact of her death. But for his own selfish, cowering sake, he can't bear it, so he's careful. He makes his non-report and she asks why he didn't just call with it.

_You won't answer,_ he thinks to himself. _You wouldn't have answered._ But he doesn't know that's true. He doesn't know if things might have been different if he'd been more careful with her. He thinks of everything yet to come. The long hour baring his soul to his mother and the phone constantly in his hand after that. The endless, agonizing night and hope rises in him again, Crueler than ever.

_Your dad came to see me . . ._

She ignites instantly. Rage beyond imagining and beneath the surface, pain. The unspeakable pain of sins forgiven but not forgotten. She ignites. Flares white hot, and then it's over. The calm that descends is infinitely worse.

_Get out, Castle. Now. Don't come back._

He goes without a word. With terror and grief like lead in his gut. He goes home and waits for the end. Whatever end this will be. He waits for the phone to ring, and it does. A reporter wanting his sound-byte on what looks to be a murder–suicide at the home of the twelfth precinct's captain. On a decades-long cover up of corruption and murder.

The phone rings again as soon he hangs up. As soon as it clatters to the desk and he's not sure how he picks up. He's not sure why. It's Ryan this time. Anarchy in the background. An anguished apology spilling from him.

_"It's not Castle . . . what they're saying. We don't know what . . . but it's not."_

"Lockwood. It was Lockwood."

It's all he has time to say before he's pulled backward again.

 

* * *

 

_Can I come in?_

It starts there. It always starts there, and he thinks this is hell. Knows it must be, though he wonders how he got there. If a second shot rang out in the cemetery. If he was too weak to hold her in the hangar. Too useless to carry her out of harm's way for even that little while.

He wonders, but he's passive the next time and the next and the next until he's long since lost count. He says his lines. Variations on every wretched theme, and she dies again and again. In the cemetery mostly, but sometimes it's worse than that.

Sometimes he's quicker. Just a fraction of a second, and he never knows why, but then it's the hospital. Lanie covered in her blood and one final, devastating rattle from her chest, loud enough to hear over the cacophony of voices and machines and the shrieking wheel of the gurney.

Sometimes it draws out. A stranger looking absurd with a surgical mask dangling from one ear, explaining that her heart stopped and nothing could start it again.

Or it happens a little sooner than that. Sometimes a little sooner. She dies under Josh's hands, and he's sorry. He hates this man more than anything, and still he's genuinely, profoundly _sorry_ as his head collides with the wall and time takes him back to the beginning again.

But she dies every time.

 

* * *

 

_Can I come in?_

She can't die without him. It's the single hope he holds on to. The single, sickening hope, and he has no idea what it means when his mind says over and over that _this_ is the thing he can't bear. She can't die without him.

And then he wonders. After countless, horrifying times he suddenly wonders if this is hell at all. And if it is, how he got here when she dies without him. When the phone rings and she's dead in the hangar. Dead at Montgomery's or somewhere in between. He wonders what becomes of him and how he can end up here if there isn't a bullet for him.

He wonders and hope rises in him again. He wraps his hands around it. Holds on, though it cuts deep, and the pain is searing. He holds on and parses out every moment. He sweeps aside the constants. The inevitable, invariant words and moments and deeds. He accepts the scars they must leave— _will_ leave—in all their awful fixity.

_I know you care about her. Don't let her throw her life away._

_I cannot make Beckett stand down, Castle. I never could._

_You don't know me, Castle._

_We are over. Now get out._

A picture forms. These and a dozen other _must-be_ s woven inextricably into the fabric of her story. _Their_ story. But the rest is possibility. Every other agonizing moment can be plucked free of the whole. Rearranged or discarded altogether. He knows that from iterations without number. So many things that might or might not be and he makes up his mind.

She doesn't have to die. Whether this is time or hell or the battered wreck of his own mind, it's what _something_ —some force—wants him to see. She doesn't have to die.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He grits his teeth now. Braces himself, every time. He silences the weakness that would beg or explain or cry out for help and treats every re-visitation like an experiment."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Second chapter of an awful thing. An AU of Knockout (3 x 24) and the first bit of Rise (4 x 01). Third short chapter will go up tomorrow.

 

_Can I come in?_

He grits his teeth now. Braces himself, every time. He silences the weakness that would beg or explain or cry out for help and treats every re-visitation like an experiment. Trial and error that leaves him too much time to think. Far too much time, though that's what he strives for. The most drawn-out scenario and with it, a critical mass of possibilities, but the price is high. All that time to contemplate what he might do. Who else he'd sacrifice and to what end.

It doesn't come to that. It never comes to that, and he despises himself for it.

Montgomery dies. He _will_ die in every version of events open to him. It's a fixed point, and the coldest, bleakest part of him is inclined to whisper. It's inclined to take him aside and wonder aloud if _where_ and _when_ and _how_ might make the difference. If _where_ and _when_ and _how_ might keep her alive if only he were man enough to take the situation in hand.

But it never comes to that.

He wishes it were conscience. An uncrossable boundary, or some shining, unassailable mercy in him, but it's practical. He'd sell his soul if it meant saving her— _really_ saving her—but he remembers the first time. Certainty as they sat in the dark, the four of them in the chill of her apartment. Unshakeable certainty that he'd delayed the inevitable at best. He remembers too well.

It's sense. A ruthless, uncompromising truth, and still in the eternities he spends alone, he despises himself.

* * *

 

_Can I come in?_

It's different the last time. He knows instantly it's different. Something shifts to center him, and he's all sharp focus.

The scene plays out in her apartment. The extended version, dragged out to its most agonizing length. It hurts exactly as much as the first time. As every time since, and the fact that he's used to that—the fact that he _knows_ the pain will be as sharp each and every time—is no consolation. Nothing is consolation, but it's different.

_And what about you, Rick?_

He says his lines. The same. The same. The same, but something stirs. Some not-quite imperceptible change that tantalizes. Draws him onward.

_Is that what we are?_

She doesn't always ask. Not always, and it's loud in his mind. _Loud_ just when he most needs that still, sharp focus. _Loud_ and he gives yet another stale repetition.

_I've got no clue what we are . . ._

He loses it, then. His tenuous grasp on certainty. Misery washes in and he's sure he imagined it. He's sure the illusion of difference is just another piece of him breaking off. Falling and falling. He's sure it's another time she dies without him, and he almost misses it. Something new. Something entirely new falling at his feet.

_And it's not enough_

She's never said it before. Never. His mind races back and back. His memory is merciless; he knows every iteration without flaw or omission. She's never said it, and even when she throws him out, he holds it to him. He shelters it like a fragile spark, pale in the darkness, and he goes.

He waits. Goes through the inevitable motions and even in that—even in those terrible fixed moments—he looks for difference. For new light, and he finds it.

_For a man who makes his living with words you sure have a hell of a time finding them when it counts_

_Be there._

_You'll know._

_And what about you, Rick?_

_It's not enough._

They come together in the light of memory. Another fragile spark. He's a child. Three, maybe. Not quite four. He's howling and there's something delectable in the purity of that rage. Freedom in the feeling of his lungs emptying and filling to start all over again, but his mother comes.

She gathers him up and hushes him, braving sour looks with an apology and a smile. Coaxing the tragedy out of him and muffling a laugh in his hair as he sobs it out. His hand splayed on the page of a book filled with words he wants so badly to understand, but whichever way he turns—his head, the page, the world—the sense of it is gone.

She tells him not to chase it. Not to stare so long and so hard. To let the meaning come to him, and he hates the lesson as much now as he did then. But this is her life and he'll do anything. He takes it to heart. He drifts through the hours, knowing when the phone rings that it's Montgomery this time. The man who loves her like a father. Soul sick, but unwavering. Knowing the part he has to play. The part he'll always have to play.

_Be there. Castle._

_You'll know._

"I will," he says quickly.

It's the first time he's said anything in the end. In that fraction of a moment before the crushing weight of dead air on the line, and there's nothing more than a pause. The briefest extension possible, but he heard. It can't be any kind of solace, but Castle knows he must have heard.

He goes to the hangar as he has a hundred times before. A thousand, and it doesn't waver even then. This grim, gutting certainty that this time is different. It takes hold. It takes _control,_ and he's terrified by the violent sensation of his arms around her. Her howling, untethered rage as her feet come off the ground and he carries her away. As he claps an uncompromising hand over her mouth to silence her.

And then it's gone. Suddenly and he feels himself sliding. The ground tilting up and his limbs sagging like he's a marionette with his strings cut. She breaks away, and that's not supposed to happen. It's _never_ happened, and it's the opposite of possibility. It's devastating in its finality, and it's _wrong._

"He loves you, Kate." It's a rasp. Less than a whisper and she shouldn't be able to hear it. "Roy loves you and your dad loves you and _I_ love you." She stops. She shouldn't even be able to hear it over the chaos of the hangar and roaring grief inside her, but she stops. "Please don't. Please don't go in there. We love you."

She doesn't go. She turns and they stagger to each other. She sobs. Pours out agony and he catches it. Catches her when the last shot sounds and her body gives out. He holds her and she holds him. Just a moment, and then she goes. They go together.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks for reading. I promise I'll rip the rest of the band-aid off in the morning.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He's so tired. It's as if every shock and wound and grief from every iteration takes up residence in him at once. But it's not over."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: And the end. Sorry this took a little longer to get up than I anticipated. Another 700 words or so crept into this chapter. Still an awful thing. An AU of Knockout (3 x 24) and the first bit of Rise (4 x 01).

 

 

 

It's different. Not over. He wishes and wishes it were. He's tired, and that's a shock. He doesn't remember anything like this. His body intruding even when she kicked and clawed at him. Even with Josh's fist connecting. Sending him back into the wall. But now he's _so_ tired. It's as if every shock and wound and grief from every iteration takes up residence in him at once. But it's not over.

Ryan weeps. Esposito rages. He sits silently by her side, and still it's different. _She's_ different.

_No one. No one outside this immediate family ever needs to know about this._

She's said it before. Countless times. Countless. But her eyes come to rest on each of them in turn. On Ryan and Esposito. Her gaze lingers and he knows the word is different this time. _Family._ It's what she means and not what some version of her is supposed to say. Not some line she's mouthing because she knows she's already dead.

It lingers on him, heavy enough that he raises his eyes to meet it. To see that for him it's a question. _Family. Is that what we are?_

He stays behind.

She touches Esposito's shoulder. He all but shrugs it off as too much, though he catches her fingers in going. The briefest touch. She and Ryan fall together. An awkward, anguished embrace, and the two of them are going, clear on the parts they'll play. They have to play.

But he stays behind.

"Kate." He reaches for the door. Closes it and turns to find her swallowing hard. Pleading with him, and he says it for her, however much it hurts. "Not . . . that. No."

"Not . . ." She sags against the doorframe, reaching out to him with one hand. "Castle. There's so much . . . just not right now."

Her fingers find his wrist. His pulse and the way they rest there holds the promise of _then._ Of _after_ and something wonderful flares in him, just for an instant.

"Not _right_ now." He turns his palm up. Glides it along hers with patient, aching care until he's holding her fingers loose in his. "But will you do something for me? Please, Kate. One thing."

* * *

 

 

She's said yes. With her eyes open wide and a hundred questions bottled up behind the press of her lips. He's told her what he can, and even that little sounds insane, but she's said she would, and he trusts her. The world is different—she's different—and he trusts her.

Still, he's grateful enough that his knees go weak when she finds a moment. When she carves it out in quiet corner and holds his fingers loose in hers. Presses his knuckles to where her ribs should be and he feels it, the uncompromising flex of her body armor.

"Thank you," he breathes, and she's the steady one now. The one raising clear eyes to meet his.

Her eulogy isn't new. Isn't different from the words he's endured who knows how many times before, waiting. _Waiting._ But there's a quiet power behind them this time. The force of will when her eyes meet his.

_And if you're very lucky, you find someone to stand with you._

The shot comes like he knows it will. Like he's told her it will, and she's listened, the horror of these few days lending a numb kind of faith. They've done what they can to guard against it with the little he knows. But it comes anyway. Something fixed in this version, though knowing can't lessen the horror one iota. It can't touch the fear or anguish or rage.

His body collides with hers, and the thought comes quickly. _Too late. Too late,_ and with it he feels his mind coming to pieces for good. He was wrong. He was wrong and there'll be no next time. He's shattered, but he rolls her body toward his and her eyes are fluttering open.

" _Fuck_ that hurts. Castle. It _hurts._ "

No one hears it but him. No one could with her breath coming and going in quick, shallow shards of glass.

"I know," he whispers, his fingers sweeping over wreck of her shirt and it's dry. Beautifully, mercifully dry. He lets his lips touch her cheek. Just once, but it's an addiction already. "I know, but stay down. Please, Kate. Close your eyes and stay down."

* * *

 

 

It's a shambles before they even reach the hospital. A plan that blossoms so fragile, even his heart can't hold on to it, and still he wants to believe. That she can run. She can die another way, and they can run together. A writer in exile after the tragic murder of his muse. But it's a shambles.

He pulls Lanie into the back of the ambulance with him. He sees her father beyond. His mother's arms strong around Alexis. Ryan and Esposito out of their minds already, and he knows the most he can do is buy them time.

She gives him that much, though. She nods. Chokes out that her dad has to know. The boys have to know it's not true. He fumbles the phone. Keeps one hand free to make trembling contact with her every second. His voice is as low as he can make it over the shriek of the sirens and roar of everything.

"Mother. Mother, I need you to listen . . ."

"Beckett!" Lanie is sharp with fear, her own hands slapping Kate's aside to pull at buttons and the slim straps of the ruined body armor. "Stay _still._ Let me work."

But Kate writhes, her head twisting back to see his face as he pockets the phone again. "Castle?"

"It's handled." He drops down on to the narrow bench next to her. Lays a heavy, calming hand on her shoulder. "If anyone can create confusion, it's my mother."

"And she'll tell . . ." She struggles hard enough to sit up that it takes both him and Lanie to settle her again. The impact of her back against the gurney draws a sharp groan from her

"She will. She will." He strokes the hair back from her temple, afraid to touch her any place else. "She's ok?" He's pleading with Lanie.

"Armor did its job." There's venom in the look she gives him. What if it hadn't? And he knows. He _knows_. But Lanie is Lanie. Practical and efficient to the end. She pulls the dark material of Beckett's dress uniform shirt aside. The armor is rippled mess, light from the monitors glinting off the distorted metal of the bullet, connectric rings of burned black radiating out from the center. "You'll be a walking bruise for a little while. And I want an X-ray to make sure there's no rib fracture to watch."

"X-ray. That's . . ." Kate shakes her head, wincing again. Hissing through the shallow intake of breath that's all she can manage. "You don't X-ray a dead woman."

"A broken rib?" Castle looks to Lanie again. "Right over her heart? That's dangerous . . ."

"Not as dangerous as them knowing they screwed up." There's anger flaring in her, pulling past the pain, and he knows that black look. He's terrified of it. "Time, Castle. This was your idea."

"Josh." It's Lanie's voice. As keen as a knife to the center of him, and it's hardly any better for her. He thinks it's hardly better the way she startles and pales, but Lanie means something else entirely. "He can help shuffle things on the hospital end. I can . . . " She trails off, registering their reactions at last.

"He can help," Kate says finally.

"Will he, though?" The question unfurls like the crack of a whip, and it's still somehow childish for all that.

"He will." She lays her fingers on his wrist. Over his pulse and it leaps and he doesn't know whether to be defiant or ashamed. What kind of fool he's being, given everything, but he nods anyway, and she lets go a breath it's been hurting her to hold. "He won't like it, but he will if I ask."

So she does. She asks. Though backchannels at first with Lanie taking point. Using her title and the sheer force of her personality to call ahead directly. To navigate the paramedics and bypass the usual ER protocols until he's slamming through the trauma room door. Josh in all his fury, spouting out-of-place lines.

_"You_ did this! This is _your_ fault!"

Castle is dizzy with it. Suddenly lit up with the memory of his head hitting the wall. Time dragging him back. But her voice cuts through everything.

"No."

She says it again, and the silence is absolute. The wonder of it—breath and the beauty of her mouth to shape it—strikes every word down in all three of them.

"Can you give us a minute?" Her eyes drift from Lanie to him. "My dad. Castle. Make sure. Please."

"I will."

And he does, though he hates it. Hates every step from the moment the door swings closed at his back and Lanie murmurs that she'll stay close. Hates every deafening tick of every wall clock measuring how long she's out of his sight until he turns the final corner and sees Jim's face. Certainty rushing in to shore him up as his eyes land on Castle.

"It's true?" he asks like a man condemned.

Castle nods, grateful in the flurry of minutes for so many of the things that make Jim Beckett the man he is. Grateful for how few words it takes to give him some semblance of where they are. How _absolute_ the silence has to be.

Grateful for the instinct that has the man turning to his mother. To Alexis to ask them both to stay with him for now. They drift together to the end of the hall. The three of them to where it widens into a sitting area. Awful chairs and awful carpet, but somewhere to rest with their heads bent together. It looks like grief. How could it not? It looks exactly like grief and he hates what a blessed relief it is that they play their parts so well.

He's at a loss then. Everything in him yearning to race back to her side. Everything in him fixing his body in place as if he's waiting.

His phone rings. Impossibly rings, and he knows it shouldn't. He knows he switched it off as absolutely as he knows this is what fixed him in place. This is what he was waiting for.

His thumb comes down on the green button. He lifts the phone to his ear without a word.

_Mr. Castle. I'm a friend of Roy Montgomery's. I'm calling about Detective Beckett. We need to talk._

He listens, not quite wordlessly. Terse questions now and then, blank and emotionless.

_Do we have an understanding?_

Time stops. Not like before. There's no wrenching sensation. No drag at every cell in his body, but time stops. He's at the foot of the corridor. A few squares of abused tile measuring the distance between him and her, and he's decided.

The world lurches into motion again. Josh striding from the room. Sparing one look of pure hatred for him. Lanie twisting in place, unsure whether or not to make her way through the still- swinging door.

"No." The word tugs at him. It rights him with the solidity of an anchor in a new world. "I won't keep it from her. I won't make that decision without her."

_Mr. Castle. You don't seem to understand . . ._

"I do," he cuts in. "I understand."

He drops the phone back in his pocket. Lets Lanie catch his elbow and trades a few words with her. Things he already knows. Things she already knows, and she leaves him to it. To push through the door and take his place at her side.

"Castle . . ."

She's pale. Angry and shaking with adrenaline and loss and the burden of unshed tears.

"He's fine. Your dad is fine." He presses the words to the back of the hand she holds out to him, sinking on to the narrow strip of bed by her knees. "Are you?" He sweeps the hair back from her face, unthinking, but she bows her head, pressing the curve of her cheek to his palm.

"No," she says faintly, far too many meanings hanging on that one fragile word. But there's the hint of a smile in it. More than that when she raises her eyes to his. "But I have to be, don't I?"

"You do. We both do."

His hand falls away and he's drifting again. At a loss until she takes it up. Until she shifts herself sideways, feet dangling. Until she pulls him down beside her and presses his hand and hers over the hideous black in the center of her chest.

"Tell me," she says, letting their hands drop to rest where their thighs touch. Sliding her fingers through his and holding on. "Tell me what I need to know."

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thank you for giving this a chance. A big departure for me, and there are things about it that make me unhappy, but this is how it wanted to turn out. I appreciate the reads/reviews.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I don't know. I don't. The only thing I can offer is an apology and a promise that the two remaining chapters will be up quickly. Probably the second tonight and the third tomorrow.


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